SANS ISC InfoSec Forums

This has been a really quiet day on the Net. Probably just as well, it has given this Handler some time to reflect on what I see going on out in the black hole we call the World Wide Web and think about how things have changed in the last 12 months or so. It never ceases to amaze me how incredibly intuitive our own Dr J. (Johannes U.) is. About a year ago I had a "discussion" with Johannes via email. I was in the process of developing a PowerPoint presentation for a workshop that I was giving on the Internet and its perils. One of the questions that I presented to Johannes was ? If you could look to the future what do you think will be the biggest problem facing the Net in the next year or two. His answer to me at the time was ?Botnets?. At the time I was surprised because I really hadn?t talked to anyone or worked with any computers that had been affected by ?bots?. Ironically ? just a few months later I now fully agree with the good ?Dr. J?. I have dealt with so many computers in the last 9 months that are riddled with the little devils that I am beginning now to wonder if any computers exist that don?t have ?bots?.

I haven?t had a chance to ask Johannes to answer that question again. I wonder if his answer will change. Humm!

Now how about you? What do you think will be the big problems in the summer of 2006? Maybe I will compile your replies and post them on June 1 of 2006. What do you think?
U.S. CERT Summary of Security Items from May 25 through May 31, 2005

U.S. CERT has released their summary. I find it quite interesting the number of new vulnerabilities and updated old vulnerabilities are identified. Make sure that you get your systems patched, plugged or whatever it is that the manufacturer recommends. We don't want any of you our faithful readers to fall to the devious hackers lurking out on the WWW.

A big thank you to one of our Handlers - Scott F - for providing us with his toolkit recommendations. This toolkit looks like it will provide you with everything you will need to monitor, troubleshoot and maintain you network.

If you have other windows based tools that you keep in your personal toolkit, please let us know through our .